Wayfire - A WM 3D Composer (Installation on Arch Linux)

A 3D Wayland window manager and composer, inspired by Compiz and based on wlroots.


Wayfire - A WM 3D Composer (Installation on Arch Linux)

Wayfire is a 3D Wayland composer, inspired by Compiz and based on wlroots. Its goal is to create a customizable, extensible and lightweight environment without sacrificing its appearance.

Installation

yay -S wayfire
sudo pacman -S alacrity

  • Copy wayfire.ini to ~/.config wayfire.ini
  • Log out (Super + shift + q) and choose Wayfire

Basic shortcut keys

  • Super + Enter - Opens the terminal (Alacrity)
  • Super + q - Close a window
  • Ctrl + Alt + Backspace - Off

Configuration

  • Open the file: ~/.config/wayfire.ini
  • Uncomment the lines that start with # [input] and # xkb_layout = us, fr
  • Replace: us, fr with only br Leave it like this:
[input]
xkb_layout = us
  • Install Wofi with Yay:
yay -S wofi
  • Open the Wofi dmenu style
wofi --dmenu

Theme very basic!

  • Open the Wofi drun style:
wofi --show=drun

Or just run that is very minimalist (I recommend).

  • Choose the mode you want and include it in your wayfire.ini
vim ~/.config/wayfire.ini
# search line command_laucher
command_laucher = wofi --show=drun

  • Open Wofi with the shortcut key: Super + shift + enter
  • Customize Wofi colors with CSS
  • Create the file/directory and open it
mkdir -p ~/.config/wofi
vim .config/wofi/config

Enter these initial sample colors

window {
  color: #A9B1BD;
  background-color: #2D3037;
  }

  #inner-box {
  margin: 5px;
  border: 2px solid #2D3037;
  background-color: #2D3037;
}

For more information click here

Indicate the style path to the command in the: ~/.config/wayfire.ini: command_laucher = wofi --show=drun --style ~/.config/wofi/config

Firefox

If you have Firefox installed and are unable to open, configure the Firefox opening file as follows:

  • Open the file:
sudo vim $(which firefox)
  • Add the line with this content: export MOZ_ENABLE_WAYLAND = 1 and leave it like this:
#!/bin/sh
export MOZ_ENABLE_WAYLAND=1
exec /usr/bin/firefox-bin "$@"
  • Add background and panel Install the wf-shell with Yay
yay -S wf-shell

The Panel and the background will start automatically.

  • If you want to change the background, create a file: ~/.config/wf-shell.ini and set [background] and image = /home/YOUR_USER/path/to/image.jpg, example:

    vim ~/.config/wf-shell.ini

[background]
image = /home/YOUR_USER/path/to/image.jpg

Do not use a shortcut: ~/image.jpg. If you want a complete example with pre-defined settings and explanations such as comments in the file itself, download the file: wf-shell.ini.example

curl https://raw.githubusercontent.com/WayfireWM/wf-shell/master/wf-shell.ini.example -o ~/.config/wf-shell.ini

If you want to take a screenshot

Use grim

sudo pacman -S grim

Example of use: grim screenshot.png

More shortcut keys

  • Alt + Tab - Holding, navigate through the open windows with minified visuals;
  • Alt + Esc - Holding, displays the bottom window forward with transparency;
  • Super + → - Moves the window to the right vertical;
  • Super + ← - Moves the window to the left vertical;
  • Super + ↑ - Moves the window to full screen;
  • Super + ↓ - Moves the window to the last position;
  • Super Only, shows each of the 9 desktops with their respective windows.
  • Super + Ctrl + → - Moves the window sideways and down/up with “sliding”;

And more

  • Point to the corner of a window with the mouse, when the resize icon appears, click and hold moving and choosing as you wish.
  • To enable easier logout, install wlogout:
yay -S wlogout

Plugins

To activate a plugin add to wayfire.ini, example adding Cube. Enter the name of the plugin and use activate and choose a key combination to start it

[cube]
activate = <super> <alt> BTN_LEFT

I made a video that shows all the procedures mentioned above. Remembering that the video is in Brazilian Portuguese, however, the most important thing is to see the commands that are universal.

Follow the video


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Marcos Oliveira

Marcos Oliveira

Software developer
https://github.com/terroo